23 February 2013

Some Wurtzel quotes.

Until tonight, I had never read anything by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Is that crazy? Is it bad? Should I be embarrassed? I feel like it is, and I should be.

I read this article in New York Magazine, and my evening went from a little listless to a tornado of underlining and ripping pages out and taping them together elsewhere. Assorteds --

Meanwhile, most people who think they are practicing law are actually making binders, and my guess is that most people who think they are doing whatever important thing they are doing are making binders. The binders from law firms go to a locker in a warehouse in a parking lot in an office park off an exit of a turnpike off a highway off an interstate in New Jersey, never to be looked at again. No one ever read them in the first place. But some client was billed for the hourly work.

The best lesson I have learned from David Boies is patience. He deposed Bill Gates for twenty hours to get the answer he needed, so David believes in time.

Even when you are picking out a dog, it has to be true love and not a list of pluses and minuses or a bunch of desirable traits you would describe on OkCupid. There is no substitute for magic. I have only ever known love at first sight, and I know it when I see it.

I am Potter Stewart wandering through an overwhelming emotional life that only makes sense on contact. It’s all pornography to me, all of life is so visually rich and it all hits me absolutely like flat sheets of hard rain so that the only feeling I trust is the one that comes down in a devastating way. When I meet people who tell me that they are immune to the power of beauty or that they don’t get overwhelmed by plain old lust, I don’t think they are lucky; I think they are missing all the fun. And all the pain, of course.

We would have coffee and paprika biscuits in bed on Wednesday mornings.

The list of things I can’t be bothered with goes on forever. The list of things that bother me goes on forever.

Now, in a whole long day of croissants in the morning and multiple dog walks and stops at the bodega for yogurt and jam, I may speak with people I care about only in type.

I already know that the article will make some people roll their eyes, and, reading the first dozen or so comments, have seen even more - disgust, contempt, offense, and all out wars between commenters. As I read, I was in some inner part of my brain, and was only reading the words and visualizing it all. When I wake up and pull myself outward a little, it does seem to be a paradoxical blend of consciously describing being in the moment and all the way at the F extreme of the F/T continuum, and being at a high enough perspective to also consciously point out the shortcomings of a life led with intention, planning, and within a social construct of sorts. ANYWAY.